Friday, November 6, 2009

New version of recipe for US friends, mixed spice, and colouring...

Good morning all! :-)This is just a quick little post to answer some questions, and to help you all make those Rock Cakes of mine.Due to Aussies and Americans using different measures - we using Metric and you using Imperial - I made an extra copy of the recipe that includes Imperial measurements. It's listed in the Sidebar under "Cook With Me", or you can download from here - recipe for Rock Cakes with US Imperial measuresIn case you like to make some recipes that appear in metric measure I thought I'd add this mini conversion list for you.90g butter = 3 oz US1 Metric cup = 1 1/4 cups US1 Metric tablespoon = 4 teaspoons US

Many of you have asked what is Mixed Spice?It is bought prepackaged in the spices section of your grocery store, and is a mixture generally containing cinnamon, coriander, ginger, cassia, pimento, cloves and nutmeg - however some brands may contain allspice, caraway and cumin as well. It is used with fruit and in cakes.

Our Caster Sugar is not confectioners sugar. Dear Stephanie let me know that it is your granulated sugar - Confectioners sugar is what we Aussies call Icing Sugar; it's very powdery and used, of course, for icing.Caster sugar is very finely ground white sugar granules used for baking cakes, cookies etc. It dissolves faster than regular white sugar granules when you cream it with the butter in cake making.

Added NOTE: Just received an email from Sarah to tell me that our Caster Sugar is *extra fine sugar* in the US! Thanks Sarah!!~~~~~Thank you to the ladies who emailed me to warn about the danger of giving chocolate to dogs. I have heard that before, and wanted to assure you that our Bob only enjoys tiny morsels of Choc-chip cookies, and that's probably no more than once a month...however, to err on the side of caution is best, is it not? From now on I shall hide them from him and offer him some cookie crumbs without the choc-chips. Thank you for watching out for our Bob-dog!~~~~~I noticed a comment was left on our Gum Tree Designers blog asking for a tutorial showing how to colour-in on fabric, and one of us (probably very colouring-savvy Cheryl) will do a tutorial for you next year, but in the meantime I think you'll find Carrie has a good colouring tutorial if you're using crayons to colour. Cheryl uses Derwent colouring pencils, and I use Prismacolor, so perhaps we'll do two tutorials next year as her way needs a little more involvement from you than mine.

I'm off to shop for next week's Home Ec classes now, and then I have a secret project to return to...Have a lovely day wherever you are,HugsJennyxxx

9 comments:

You know, funny you mention caster sugar as our (U.S.) granulated sugar . . . we do have extra fine sugar here. I noticed it on the shelf last week - on the package it said extra fine for drinks/dissolves quicker for drinks and cakes. I had no idea this finer sugar existed. ;)

Who knew there were so many different sugars?! I guess because I don't bake, lol. That's dh's job. And I never knew our measuring system was called Imperial - I just thought there was "metric" and "not metric". Pretty pathetic, lol!

I have a free unit converter that I downloaded from somewhere on the internet - it comes in handy since we're so behind the times in not using metric.

Thanks for the recipe for sour dough bread. It is DH's absolute favourite bread!! He used to make all our bread until I realised that I was better gluten free. Now he just makes mine! Maybe we can modify this a little and both share.Rainbow smiles...GloriaPS...I'm going to post photos of the border on the round robin on Sunday! Yeahh..I'm so excited that I've finished it with a day to spare!! Yeah...

Thank you the Imperial measurements help. It is much appreciated. I remember using Castor Sugar when we lived in Europe (and we used the metric system). Shame on me because I forgot how to convert our measurements.

Did you notice that you now have 600 followers!! Did the bells and whistles go off and are balloons and confetti falling from your sewing room ceiling! Wow! Congratulations!I can see why...I love your blog and apparently so do 599 other quilters! Take care!Paulette

Thanks for taking to time to give us the imperial measurements. That mixed spice is nothing I've ever heard of. We have Pumpkin Pie Spice, Apple Pie Spice, Allspice. I'm going to try mixing the ingredients together you gave us and see what I come up with. I'm into cooking so it will be fun.

Thank you for the updated recipe Jenny! Regarding caster sugar - I read somewhere that if you can't find extra-fine sugar, you can put a measure of regular sugar in your food processor and grind it finer. I don't think there is a spice mix equivalent over here though. I am going to try your recipe this weekend using pumpkin pie spice as a substitute. I'm sure it will be yummy!